Owners of Tesla Inc. vehicles found themselves locked out of their cars on Labor Day Monday after the company experienced an outage of the app customers use to open the vehicles.

The outage primarily affected Model 3 owners but also owners of other Tesla vehicles who use the app to gain access to their cars.

The Model 3 is unique among Tesla’s lineup in that owners are not provided with a key, so they have to rely on the app or a provided key card for entry. Most owners rely on the app alone, meaning when the app isn’t working, they lose the ability to access their vehicles.

Extreme Tech reported that the outage lasted about three and a half hours. Model 3 owners were forced to call Tesla to complain while waiting for a resolution. This being the age of social media, owners also took to Twitter to complain.

@Tesla @elonmusk i am locked out of my car and been on hold now for 12 minutes. Why is it so difficult to talk to a Tesla trained human for support?

— briango (@briango) September 3, 2019

Help! I'm stranded! I don't know wtf…My @Tesla app isn't working all of a sudden. I don't have my keycards on me (stuck at a dinner party), and I can't get any help or roadside assistance bc of the holiday. Looked online and looks like others are effected. Help @elonmusk!

— liziculous (@liziculous) September 3, 2019

Neither Tesla nor Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk commented on the outage on public forums. But a Tesla spokesperson seemingly downplayed the outage, telling Gizmodo that the app was only temporarily unavailable on Monday but full functionality was soon restored. The same spokesperson added that owners will still able to access their vehicles with a physical key fob or key cards, not exactly solace for customers who carry neither.

Arguably the outage serves as a reminder to Tesla owners always to carry the vehicle’s key fob or key card, but it’s also a reminder that technology is only as good as when it works.

The outage comes as the National Transportation Safety Board has released part of its findings of an investigation in which a Tesla Model S crashed into the back of a fire truck in January 2018.

Roadshow noted that the NTSB did find that Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash, but the operator of the vehicle — driver arguably not the correct term — had not been paying attention at the time the crash occurred.

The full findings of the investigation are slated to be released Wednesday.

Photo: nordique/Flickr